


Sorcery

by LadyNogs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Mythology
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, I don't know how this happened, Sort of Norse Myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNogs/pseuds/LadyNogs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief character study of Loki and his maker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorcery

**Author's Note:**

> This popped into my head almost fully formed - all I did was tweak it. It has no real canon relationship to either Norse Myth or Marvel's Loki, so take it as a bit of head canon/alternate origin.

They say that to name a thing gives you power over it. They say that knowing a sorcerer’s name lends you the skill to counter his spells, turn them inward, make them less.

They say that it was Odin who taught Loki to shift his skin, to make himself other than he appeared. They say that it was Frigga who taught him to fight, to draw knives from the air, to conjure illusions. Later, they said it was Thanos who taught Loki to enslave the wills of men, to kill without mercy.

And all of them were deceived.

Not by Loki’s silvered words, but by the lies that had been laid in his skin by the one he once called wife-lover-mother-mistress.

When Loki fell from the Bifrost, he thought he fell to his death - how could he have known he would fall to all of his deaths, every variation, every permutation of his death, of Ragnarok, lives where he was raised at Laufey’s knee, lives where he slew Baldur with a sprig of mistletoe, lives where Odin was his brother, where Odin was his father, where he died a squalling infant left in the snows of Jotunheim, where he lay bound to a stone with the entrails of his son, where he was childless, where he bore monsters, where he laid in quiet calm with a fair-haired beauty, where he broke and broke and broke, a thousand times, a million, countless threads of his life, too long, soaked in the blood of innocents, in the blood of the guilty, and through it all the cold blue whisper of lips crimson with ichor, who named him Loki, Silvertongue, Bringer, who took him into her icy embrace, who taught him the lineaments of magic, of desire, of grief.

Her name was Angrboða, at least, that was what he called her, what she allowed herself to answer to, when the first flush of passion had faded and they lay in a tangle of limbs and furs on her pallet. He met her, unwary, in a forest glade far from the well-traveled paths of Asgard, and he didn't once pause to think it odd that he would fall so easily into her bed, would spend himself with such vigor and lust between her thighs. She was blue-skinned, with fair hair, and lips so crimson they seemed limned in blood. Dark lines, like scars, or tattoos, like runes in some foreign tongue, traced her limbs, etched her cheeks, made tracks for the sweat of their lovemaking.

He was three years with her, before the haze across his mind began to fade.

She was heavy with child, when the day dawned that Loki found himself far from home and with a wife at hand, a massive wolf cub and a larger serpent twined at his ankles. _His children_ , a voice whispered, deep in his mind, and he shuddered to think what horror now grew in the giantess' belly, what monstrous _thing_ their unnatural union had wrought.

She laughed, when his voice broke in a scream of terror and rage. Laughed, as the tears at her betrayal fell unchecked into the thick fur of his son's neck.

_You are mine, little Loki. You have always been mine. When the gods are naught but bones and dust, when the Norns cease their weaving, when the Tree falls blackened and burned into the Abyss, you will still be mine. I have etched your bones with my sigil, carved my name across your soul, and none shall ever have you but by my sufferance. Remember, little godling, that all you have given me was by your own hand._

So overcome by his revulsion - for now he could see the blood that dried on her lips, the tangles in that once-lustrous hair, the squalor and filth of her hovel - he spared no thought to destroying her (and oh, how he would one day rue that memory, that even when he saw the truth of the witch, even then he could not raise a hand to her, so complete was her snare), and merely fled.


End file.
